Articles on herbal medicines that have appeared in back issues of OUTREACH

Contents

Plants that kill can often cure (plus exercise)

The effect of plant chemicals on animals

A disappearing storehouse of medicinal plants

The effect of plant chemicals on humans

War on drugs: the tobacco connection

Traditional herbal medicine and modern medicine

Using local plants to treat intestinal worms

Treating cuts and wounds

Understanding medicinal plants teaching materials available from World Neighbors

Traditional medicine to graduate

Film: Jungle pharmacy

Indigenous treatment for drug dependence in Thailand

Identifying health-protecting customs

A simple and effective cough syrup we can prepare at little cost from the plants we find around us

Discovering the uses of medicinal plants in your neighbourhood

Film and teaching suggestions - Herbal medicine: fact or fiction?

Pills and potions

Revival of traditional medicine in Amazonia

Decode the drug

Biodiversity and health

Barefoot doctors

How a rainforest in Western Samoa was saved

Identifying health-protecting customs

The challenge for the health worker or educator is not to
change peoples behaviour. It is to help people understand,
respect and build upon what is healthy in their own culture. Every area has
unique traditions and customs that protect health. Beneficial customs should be
encouraged. Here are some examples:

In several parts of the world, people use bees honey to
treat burns.

Figure

The concentrated sugar in honey prevents bacterial growth.
Recently, doctors have been experimenting with similar treatment of burns.

In West Africa, villagers eat yams during most of the year. But
during the rainy harvest season, eating yams is taboo. Scientists
have found that this custom makes medical sense. Yams contain small amounts of a
poison (thiocyanate) that helps control sickle cell anemia. This
kind of anemia causes many problems and sometimes death. But it also helps
protect people against malaria, So the tradition of eating yams only when
malaria is less common (the dry season), helps protect people against both
sickle cell anemia and malaria.

Figure

In Mexico, long before penicillin had been discovered, villagers
were treating women with childbed fever by giving them a tea brewed
from the underground fungus gardens of leaf-cutting ants.

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